There is no doubt that online gaming is an industry that is growing every day and satisfies the tastes of more and more people.
Every day, millions and millions of people play online for fun and entertainment, and the number of children and young people is growing more and more.
And with this growing population, online threats are also growing, due to a growing number of people who, for one reason or another, seek to take advantage of the innocence of this population.
It is important to understand that these cybersecurity threats are not only a vulnerability to losing information but can influence children and adolescents.
Through online games, children can be exposed to accessing inappropriate content for their age, getting involved in viral challenges that can be dangerous for children and adolescents.
Cybersecurity practices are focused on protecting your home and family from online threats, it helps protect systems, networks, computers, servers, mobile devices, and programs from digital attacks.
Even though, when we talk about online gaming, there are different types of games all of them have different kinds of threats.
Mobile gaming threats
Mobile gaming is one of the biggest and fastest-growing types of games, there is a great variety of them.
A lot of the games are downloaded from official stores and big developer companies, but there is also a big share of independent developers, also known as indies, that increase the offer of games.
The risk on this is that many persons download games from an ad that they just saw, not knowing if the download is packed with malware or virus that can open a “back door” to a cybercriminal to your or your family’s devices.
Online gaming threats
Although in online games, we have the same risk of mobile games unconsciously downloading malware or virus programs that allowed access to the cybercriminal to our devices for accessing, modifying, or destroying information.
Most online games also have chats to interact with other players. This feature makes the games more appealing and engaging.
And of course, chatting and knowing new people is fun, but it can become a victim of Social Engineering.
As defined at www.investopedia.com, “social engineering is the act of exploiting human weaknesses to gain access to personal information and protected systems. Social engineering relies on manipulating individuals rather than hacking computer systems to penetrate a target’s account.”
Remember that cybercriminals rely on meeting persons in places where people are having fun or relaxing, to exploit that they are not aware of what’s happening.
The goals of this criminal may vary, and a person can be the victim of different threats, for example, getting access to credit cards or financial information, getting access to private information, such as photographs, or being contacted by sexual predators that are looking to meet on the real life.
Social media threats
Social media threats can vary a lot, and here we can observe the threat that we discuss on mobile and online gaming.
A cybercriminal may try for you to click on links that can download the threat or create a fake profile to look more appealing to the possible victims and perform social engineering.
But also, some threats can be disguised as “Challenges” forcing the victim to experience social pressure and take actions that may put your physical security or information at risk
Cybersecurity threats increase considerably every year, so it is important to be responsible and safe when promoting the use of online games for children and adolescents, protecting them will reduce the cybersecurity threats that exist. Avoiding some other risks that we are possibly used to hearing, such as pirated versions, fraudulent links, password theft, among others for which we are not free to witness them.
For this reason, it is necessary to prevent these cybersecurity risks and ask yourself, what do my children play? What learning do they acquire from these games? Who contacted them? And thus, be able to prevent children and adolescents from having access to material or online games that are not suitable for their learning and well-being.
Is important to establish digital security measures and to increase your cybersecurity at home to encourage children that it is extremely important to know cybersecurity threats, which we are going through, and about digital security.
These measures must be oriented to know with whom to share information, detect scams, and prevent clicking on fraudulent links.
Communication is key for parents and guardians of minors to initiate conversations regarding cybersecurity threats and thus avoid major problems for the well-being of children and adolescents.
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